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Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis QUOTES

Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis QUOTES

1 " Gen Xers are in 'the prime of their lives' at a particularly dangerous and divisive moment,' Boomer marketing expert Faith Popcorn told me. 'They have been hit hard financially and dismissed culturally. They have tons of debt. They're squeezed on both sides by children and aging parents. The grim state of adulthood is hitting them hard. If they're exhausted and bewildered, they have every reason to feel that way. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

2 " One night in December 2018, the Tony-winning actress and singer TOnya Pinkins talked onstage about her experience of menopause adding: "Things are so much better than they were decades ago, but they can be bad and better at the same time." "Bad and better" is one way to think about our prospects at this stage of life too. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

3 " In my experience, Gen X women spend lots
of time minimizing the importance of their uncomfortable or confusing feelings. They often tell me that they are embarrassed to even bring them up. Some of the unhappiest women I spoke with, no matter how depressed or exhausted they were, apologized for “whining.” Almost every one of them also described herself as “lucky. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

4 " I'm not knocking choices, just saying that having so many of them with so little support has led to a great deal of shame. Being a full and equal partner both at work and at home, having a rich social life, contributing to society, staying in shape - doing all that is exponentially harder than doing any one thing. We asked for more, and did we ever get it. I firmly believe it's fairer. Easier? No. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

5 " Maybe the Generation X story need not be: We're broke. We're unstable. We're alone. Maybe it can be: We've had a hard row to hoe. We've been one big experiment. And yet, look at us: we've accomplished so much. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

6 " Generation X women, who as children lacked cell phones and helicopter parents, came up relying on our own wits. To keep ourselves safe, we took control. We worked hard and made lists and tried to do everything all at once for a very long time without much help. We took responsibility for ourselves--and later we also took responsibility for our work or partners or children or parents. We should be proud of ourselves. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

7 " The people I know who are happy realize they can't care about everything," says Deal. "You have to decide what you care about. If everything matters to you, you're going to go nuts. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

8 " We bear financial responsibilities that men had in the old days while still saddled with traditional caregiving duties. We generally incur this double whammy precisely while hitting peak stress in both our careers and child-raising--in our forties, at an age when most of our mothers and grandmothers were already empty nesters. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

9 " The Economic Policy Institute reports that the average hourly wages paid to young college graduates hit a new low in the mid-1990s. Graduating into a strong economy versus a weak one could amount to as much as a 20 percent difference in wages over time. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

10 " If our generation has been told for decades that we have so much freedom, so many choices, such opportunities, the question women with young children face is: how free are we to reach for the stars in midlife if we have someone else depending on us? Especially when our concept of good parenting involves so much more brain space and such higher costs than it did for our mothers and grandmothers? And when we expect ourselves to be excellent, highly engaged parents while also being excellent, highly engaged employees? "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

11 " Listening to other women's stories this year has given me confirmation, finally, that our expectations have been absurd. So many women I spoke with--objectively successful women--felt ashamed of their perceived failures.

What if we're not failures? What if what we've done is good? At any rate, maybe it's good enough. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

12 " One of the main problems in making dreams come true? They cost money. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

13 " We’re the first women raised from birth hearing the tired cliché “having it all”8—then discovering as adults that it is very hard to have even some of it. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

14 " We kept hearing again and again that we could be anything we wanted to be. We had supportive mothers insisting we would accomplish more than they had. Title IX made sure our after-school classes were as good as the boys’. We saw women on television who had families and fun careers. So, if we happened to fail, why was that? The only thing left to blame was ourselves. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

15 " My expectations are way lower. I no longer believe that at this age I should have rock-hard abs, a perfectly calm disposition, or a million dollars in the bank. It helps to surround myself with women my age who speak honestly about their lives. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

16 " Johann Hari’s 2018 book Lost Connections argues that our culture has come to medicate depression first and ask questions later, without recognizing that some discomforts are not medical emergencies. He tells the story of how when he begged for antinausea medication in a jungle hospital in Vietnam, the doctors said, “You need your nausea. It is a message, and we must listen to the message. It will tell us what is wrong with you. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

17 " Generation X marks the end of the American dream of ever-increasing prosperity. We are downwardly mobile, with declining job stability. It used to be that each generation could expect to do better than their parents. New research confirms that Generation X won’t. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

18 " What I see in my Gen X patients is total exhaustion. They feel guilty for complaining, because it’s wonderful to have had choices that our mothers didn’t have, but choices don’t make life easier. Possibilities create pressure. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

19 " It’s a strange state of vacillating between having our shit together and feeling less and less like we give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

20 " Gen X girls grew up aware that we were vulnerable while being told that we were infinitely powerful. Meanwhile, Gen X boys and girls both learned early that whatever hurts we suffered, we would need to soothe ourselves. "

― Ada Calhoun , Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis